Regent College, Leicester

Regent College is one of three sixth form colleges located in Leicester, England.

It was previously known as Wyggeston Girls' Grammar School. This school was originally situated in Humberstone Gate from 1878 as Wyggeston Hospital Girls' School with only 150 pupils. At the former girls' school, Clara Collet taught from 1878 until 1885. By the time the school moved to new buildings on Regent Road in 1928, there were about 700 pupils. The college was established in 1976, when Leicester adopted the comprehensive education system, and is close to the city centre. It is in the same area as De Montfort Hall, the University of Leicester campus and fellow college Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth I College. The college was previously known as Wyggeston Collegiate until 1996 when it received its current name.

The name Wyggeston Collegiate Sixth Form College came about as a result of the Leicester Education Committee's decision in the 1970s to reduce the intake of girls at age 11 in both the Wyggeston Girls' Grammar School and the Collegiate Girls' School (also a grammar school), until, in 1981 with just the sixth forms (16 to 19 years of age) left, they combined them at the Regent Road site of the Wyggeston Girls', to form the Sixth Form College. Boys were also admitted at this time, for the first time. This was eventually considered to be an unwieldy name and by 1995 was renamed Regent College.

The school began as a small young ladies' boarding school in the church manse in Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, run at least during the late 1840s by Mrs Betsey Islip, whose husband was the Minister of the Independent Church in the parish. The college was part of the redevelopment of this part of Leicester which included De Montfort Hall and the city fire station.

It was there for nearly two decades, until in 1866, following the death of her husband, Mrs Islip took the vacant building named Collegiate House, eight miles away in College Street, Leicester. This was the former headmaster's house left vacant by the closure of the Boys' Collegiate School, Leicester's first Anglican Proprietary School, in the summer of 1866.

The Collegiate House School for Girls opened in February 1867 and by 1871, Mrs Islip has managed to purchase the south single-storey wing of the former boys' school, later known as The Rowans. The rest of the former Collegiate Boys' School was purchased by the congregation of the Oxford Street Congregational Church, Leicester and became known as the Wycliffe Chapel. A wall near the vestry separated them from the school. The school took children from at least the age of five in a kindergarten taught by Froebel-trained teachers and just girls after the age of seven.

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